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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

Chapters 16–19

Chapters 23–26

Summary: Chapter 20

During the annual summer fish fry, women show off their
baking and men fish in the nearby pond. Music and the noises of
children’s games fill the air. Maya wanders into a secluded clearing
to sit on a tree and stare at the sky. Louise Kendricks, a pretty
girl of the same age, comes upon her. At first shy toward each other,
they soon hold hands and spin around while looking at the sky. They
become best friends and spend hours trying to learn the complicated
“Tut” language because it is even more esoteric than pig latin.

While in the seventh grade, Maya receives a note from
an eighth-grader, Tommy Valdon, asking her to be his valentine.
She shows it to Louise, and Louise explains that valentines mean
love. Maya says aloud, “Not ever again.” She does not explain what
she means to Louise. They tear the note into tiny pieces and throw
it into the wind. The day before Valentine’s Day, Maya’s teacher
calls the children by name and reads aloud cards sent to them from
the eighth-grade class. Tommy sends another letter to Maya, stating
that he saw Maya and her friend tear up his note, but he does not
think she meant to hurt his feelings. He still considers her his
valentine even if she does not answer his letter. He signs the note
with his initials. When Maya decides to throw caution to the wind
and flirt with him, Tommy’s crush has already begun to wane.

Summary: Chapter 21

Bailey constructs a tent in the yard and begins playing
sexual games with girls. Bailey plays the father, the girl plays
the mother, and Maya plays the baby, sitting outside to stand guard.
After six months, Bailey loses his virginity to Joyce, an older,
well-developed girl. Bailey begins stealing things from the Store
for her. After a few months, she disappears. Her aunt later tells
Momma that Joyce ran away with a railroad porter whom she met at
the Store. Momma becomes flustered thinking that something upsetting
like that occurred under her nose. Bailey is heartbroken. Maya never
liked Joyce, but she hates her for leaving and hurting Bailey. When
Joyce was around, Maya notes, Bailey did not use sarcasm.

Summary: Chapter 22

One stormy night, a fellow townsman named George Taylor
comes to the Store and stays the night, still heartbroken over the
death of his wife, Florida. Momma urges Mr. Taylor to be thankful
for the forty years he spent with Florida, although, Momma says,
it was a pity they never had children. At the mention of children,
Mr. Taylor replies that Florida appeared before him the night before
and told him that she wanted children. Momma and Willie ask if he
had been dreaming of Florida, but Mr. Taylor insists that he was
awake. Maya has always hated the custom of telling ghost stories,
but Mr. Taylor’s account scares her even more because he insists
it is real.

To occupy herself otherwise, Maya remembers that she
went to Florida’s funeral. She did not want to go, but Florida had
left her yellow brooch to Maya, and Momma insisted that
she attend the services. The experience turned out to be Maya’s
first confrontation with mortality. At the funeral, Florida seemed
to her like the short-lived mud sculptures so often made by children
playing in the summer.

Returning from her memory, Maya cannot help but hear Mr. Taylor
narrating his experience. The night before, he saw a fat, blond,
blue-eyed baby angel laughing at him. He heard his wife’s moaning
voice, and the angel laughed harder. Eventually, Mrs. Taylor’s voice
moaned that she wanted children.

Momma suggests that if it was not a dream, maybe Mrs.
Taylor wants him to work with the children in the church. The atmosphere of
eerie gloom passes when the conversation returns to mundane, everyday
things. Maya climbs into bed with Momma, secure in the knowledge
that she could drive away scary spirits.

Analysis: Chapters 20–22

Louise’s friendship provides Maya with her first opportunity
to enjoy her youth and, to a certain extent, her independence. Maya’s experiences
prior to their friendship have matured her beyond her years, and
Louise is her first childhood friend. Before, Maya moved and interacted
largely in a world of adults, with the exception of Bailey. With
Louise, Maya begins to experience being a young girl for the first
time, playing games, inventing languages, discussing boys and young
love. It is also Maya’s first relationship that occurs outside her
family and apart from her family’s influence. Whereas Momma may
have arranged for Mrs. Flowers to show Maya attention, here Maya
meets her friend while trying to find a private place to relieve
herself in the forest. As they spin each other around and look up
at the sky, their meeting takes on a magical quality, suggesting
its importance in Maya’s development as an individual.

Although Tommy Valdon and the valentine’s crush never
leads to romance, it restores some of the innocence in Maya that
Mr. Freeman stole from her. In part, Maya feels threatened by the
valentine because she has no experience with adolescent crushes.
Mainly, however, the rape and its aftermath have led her to distrust
anything having to do with both sexual and romantic love.
Maya clearly announces that she will not let another man or boy
treat her as Mr. Freeman did. Tommy’s second letter, however, states
that his affection will not change even if Maya chooses not to respond.
Hearing this, Maya feels more secure because Tommy obviously feels
genuine affection for Maya and her personality.
Unlike Mr. Freeman, the valentine does not represent any physical
expectation from Maya, and, sensing his good intentions, she begins
to flirt shyly and innocently with him.

Although less malicious, Joyce’s power over Bailey parallels
Mr. Freeman’s power over Maya. Joyce takes advantage of Bailey’s
frustrated love for his mother in the same way that Mr. Freeman’s advances
prey on Maya’s frustrated need for physical affection. Looking back
on the relationship, Maya remarks that Joyce—who is four years older
than Bailey—represents for Bailey the mother who let him get close
to her and the sister who was never withdrawn. To a certain extent,
moreover, Joyce takes advantage of Bailey as well. As long as Bailey
provides her with stolen spoils from the Store, Joyce gives him
the affection he craves. She turns Bailey’s innocent, curious games
into sexual intercourse, taking his virginity, and then leaves him
in the dust. Maya notes that Joyce has a positive effect on Bailey
while she is around, but when Joyce skips town, Bailey reveals not
just his displeasure at the fact that she has left but also his
sense that the situation was not ideal in the first place. When Maya
asks him about Joyce, Bailey feigns disinterest at first, but then
he says that Joyce has chosen someone who will give her sex all the
time, perhaps indicating his understanding that he and Joyce used
their relationship for different purposes.

In light of Mr. Taylor’s ghost story, it is important
to note that storytelling and imagination, accounts of spirits,
the conjuring of images and beings from the past, and even superstition
all played vital roles in the African-American tradition. Just as
the Christian church provided slaves, former slaves, and their descendants
with a sense of salvation and hope, storytelling and folklore provided
them with a form of not just entertainment but empowerment. Because white
colonists and Americans drastically altered the lives of slaves and
essentially erased their connection with their homeland and their
past, slaves began writing their own history through storytelling.
(For more information, see Suggestions for Further Reading.) In this
case, Mr. Taylor’s ghost story reveals the pervasive nature of tense
race relations and conjures up the frightening baby angel as being
blond-haired and blue-eyed. Momma’s dialogue with Mr. Taylor steers
the conversation to everyday things and dispels the eerie gloom
that the ghost story cast over the room. Momma has, in her way,
cast out the specters of malevolent spirits with her quiet determined
attention to the details of everyday living.

Through a series of personal events, feelings, and thoughts, Maya Angelou is able to captivate its readers with her recounting of her life from her early years up to late adolescence. As readers, we are able to see how Maya grows from the insecure little girl in Arkansas to the strong woman who realizes that she can trust herself and will be able to keep moving forward, which is clearly shown when she realizes that she can take care of her son.

During the last chapter of the book, I feel that Maya does a great job describing the feeli... Read more→